Painting Cancer: Artist Gayle Curry takes on her worst fear.

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OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA -- From light to dark, day to night, known to unknown, artist Gayle Curry didn't experience real fear until her parents, first her father, then her mother, each received cancer diagnoses.

A questioner remarks, "There might not be another, single word in the English language that, if someone mentions that, it just changes your life."

"It does," replies Curry, "and you don't understand that until it happens to you."

Her father died within a year from pancreatic cancer.

Her mother is still fighting.

"I think the will to live is huge," she says.

But it was Gayle's response to this scary news than proved most interesting.

Doing research on her parents' conditions, she became fascinated with the color slides of cancer cells, their many variations, and their terrifying beauty.

Curry says, "It's very much a paradox."

She compiled dozens of these slides and then started working in encaustic wax, dripping colors on canvas, studying her fears on an abstract level.

Gayle explains, "For me, to be able to paint these invaders helped me process it and deal with it in a way that's kind of healing."